Killzone: Mercenary Gets Tweaks, Improved Spawn Points In New Update

It’s been quite a few weeks since Killzone: Mercenary first launched on the PlayStation Vita and the online community is still going strong. The team over at Guerilla Cambridge isn’t slowing down either, as today they’ll be launching the game’s second big update, this one addressing online stability and gameplay.

To put it bluntly, I was very impressed with Killzone: Mercenary, the first FPS to do the genre justice on Sony’s handheld device. I followed the game’s progress from E3 to the beta and, after my initial review, circled back around to drop some helpful hints for anyone who might have been struggling in the game’s online modes.

Still, no amount of advice can alter the online modes handful of blemishes, including difficulty for some players to actually get into the firefights and spawn points that were frequently less than ideal. Any shooter fan will tell you that nothing sucks worse than getting dropped into the game only to be shot in the back before you’ve even had a chance to take a step. That sort of situation would pop up from time to time in Mercenary, which could be quite frustrating.

Thankfully, the developers have been paying close attention to the forums and player reactions and have now addressed several of those issues. According to Tech Director Matt Porter, however, there’s some bad(ish) news to get out of the way first.

Anyone who downloaded Mercenary digitally already knows that the game comes with a hefty file size. That day-one behemoth only made matters worse, making for a game that ate up a hefty chunk of any Vita memory card. However, this gray cloud has a silver lining.

“When this new patch installs, the first patch will essentially be deleted,” Porter explained. “But you will need the extra space initially. This download is necessary in order to pave the way for future planned revisions to the game.”

I consider that a double silver lining, actually. It’s annoying to make sure I have that extra space before downloading the new update, but at least it’ll override the old update and, presumably, return to its old size. Plus, “future planned revisions to the game” is always good news. The game’s three modes and six maps are great, but more is always merrier in these types of games.

Finally, Porter highlights some of the other major fixes being implemented by this new update, including those improved spawn points we were just talking about, fixes to bugged loadouts and medals, stability fixes, etc.